Gangs of Antares [Dray Prescot #45]

by Alan Burt Akers

  One by one the urchins left the shop to join up at a discreet distance. When it was Dimpy's turn he felt at once the strangeness of an alien place and the familiarity of crowded streets filled with people bustling about their daily lives. The clamor of people chaffering and laughing and shouting beat at him. The clatter of hooves and the grinding of bronze rimmed wheels added a touch of unreality to a lad brought up in the dens below. The air—ah, the sweet, sweet air of Kregen!

  The breeze blew cleanly, scented with baking bread and cakes and the juices of fruits, sullied only slightly by the coarser smells of commerce. The air tasted good to young Dimpy.

  The Hill of Dancing Ghosts was also known as Barter Hill and whilst the folk up here might not be the great and lordly ones they were well fed and clothed and walked with confident steps. Their slaves and servants, of course, did not share these attributes.

  The aspirant gang members moved into their pre-arranged groups slinking as they had been taught to merge and become invisible among the slaves, eyes downcast. Dimpy owned to a genuine feeling of pleasure that Big Balla stood at his elbow.

  Splitting one from the other as they trod ways they had never seen before save in the scratched markings in the dust of their den, the novices penetrated deeper into the clustered buildings of the Hill of Barter. Other young lads with respectable clothes, the Perfume Patrol of Oxonium, dashed past. Crowds jostled everywhere. Smells floated in the warm air, varying from one street and bazaar to the next. Dimpy rescinded his original decision to get this whole farce over with as quickly as possible. He was fully aware that Sleed would be keeping a very personal and hostile eye on him, so he decided to make the cramph wait. He kept to the shady sides of the streets, head bowed in the universal servitude of the slave, eyes picking up everything that went on.

  From the corner of a plaza he saw one of the gang members over the way sneak up to the rear of a self-important-looking Fristle. Lolalee was quick. Her curved knife flashed once in the lights of the suns. Then she was running fleet as a hare with the sword she had slashed from its hangings already concealed under the rags clothing her thin body. The Fristle swung about, his cat-face mean, and began yelling. By the time that happened and the crowd started to think of pursuit, Lolalee had vanished.

  “Well done,” said Big Balla, softly.

  “I like her style.”

  “There's Staky over there looking—looking unhappy. The idiot's dithering. You be careful, Dimpy.” With that, she was off.

  From his knowledge of the city and this Contour, Dimpy knew the next square was the Kyro of Nath the Haggler. The platz was busy, its stalls well patronized. Dimpy rounded the corner to see Sleed running towards him holding out a sword hilt-first. Instinctively Dimpy took the weapon into his fist and Sleed, without a word, hared off.

  Dimpy did not, just did not, believe what happened next.

  The big, ugly and altogether unpleasant Kataki to whom Sleed spoke reacted at once. From the crowds a shrill cry shocked up.

  “My sword! Thief! Thief!”

  The Kataki ran lumberingly for Dimpy.

  Without thinking, Dimpy threw down the sword and ran.

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  * * *

  Chapter two

  If you think my short sojourn in the mysterious continent of Balintol gave me an understanding of that exotic land then you are completely misinformed. The world of Kregen abounds with remarkable tales of Balintol. In the bazaars and at the corners of public buildings you can always find storytellers with their clusters of gawpers bending close. The fables of Balintol are among the perennial favorites of Kregen.

  Just at the moment I was cautiously following a Rapa thief along the crowded Avenue of Lochrivarn trying not to lose him and at the same time prevent his cunning dark eyes from spotting what I was up to. Where you have classes so very far apart in wealth you have thieves, or so it seems on Kregen as on Earth. The Rapa's accomplice, a mangy-appearing Fristle, had snatched Tiri's purse as she'd been about to pay for a trifle in the Souk of Laces. The Rapa had received the purse with such calm aplomb that no one could possibly imagine him involved in anything remotely illegal. As for the catman, he'd used a slender blade to cut the purse strings and flicked his tail to snatch it. That tail possessed a cunning little bronze hook attachment strapped to it in place of the fashionable dagger. Oh, yes, an accomplished pair of cutpurses, these two. Also, the ancient racial animosity between Rapa and Fristle, so common when I'd first arrived on Kregen, was dying down as this double-act so eloquently proved.

  The thief slipped across the avenue with a sudden dart that took him beyond a passing string of calsanys. Not wishing to upset these patient animals and suffer the noisome results I scuttled across abaft the last one's tail, narrowly avoiding an imperious fellow astride a much-decorated zorca, and reached the far side. The dratted Rapa thief was not visible among the passing throngs.

  Useless to curse, the fellow was a master of his craft. All the same, I did not feel inclined to abandon my pursuit.

  Anyway, I said to myself, I needed some exercise after the last few weeks of inaction. All hell was due to break out in the country of Tolindrin, and the city of Oxonium, as the capital, was like to receive more than its share, that seemed obvious, by Vox. Carrying on at a brisk pace and looking as far ahead through the crowds as possible I could still see no sign of the thief. Barter Hill tended to be more crowded and confused than many of the Hills of Oxonium by reason of the multitude of markets traditionally setting up shop here. The noises were not unpleasantly clamorous and the smells were kept down by the Perfume Patrol. These lads went around spraying scents and disinfectants, their services paid for by a city levy on the stallholders and shopkeepers.

  Among all this hullabaloo, where had the dratted fellow got himself to?

  The avenue debouched onto a sizeable square, the Kyro of Nath the Haggler. The twin Suns of Scorpio slanted their emerald and ruby fires down onto the mass of humanity busy bargaining, peddling, swindling and making livings varying from fairly honest to downright villainous.

  Perhaps because my senses had been heightened by detecting a couple of professional thieves at work, I noticed at once what was going on at the corner of the adjacent street.

  A young lad, an apim like me, sidled with exquisite casualness alongside a portly and gesticulating fellow haggling over the purchase of a length of azure silk. The vendor, narrow of eye and hooked of nose, kept one of those eyes constantly swiveling. Both vendor and purchaser must have been well aware of the provenance of the merchandise, by Krun. All the same, hook-nose's roving eye failed to detect the ragged lad's activities.

  With a movement fluid and fast the rascal cut the leathers of the purchaser's sword. So engrossed in the enjoyable business, the portly one failed to notice at once. The short sword vanished into the ragged robes swathing the boy and he turned to run.

  He must have seen the Kataki at the same time I did.

  Katakis are bad news at the best of times. For this sword snatcher, now was a very bad time, a very very bad time. The Whiptail did not wear uniform but a simple dark shamlak and I surmised if he was not a member of the City Watch up here to buy he could be a hired thug employed to protect a local business. He'd just love to grip his fist into the lad's frayed collar and flick him a few times—hard—with the flat of the dagger strapped to his tail.

  A second young lad, slightly smaller but just as ragged as the first, rounded the corner. The youngster with the stolen sword moved swiftly. Crossing to the newcomer he whipped out the sword and thrust it forward, hilt first. The sword was taken in that instinctive way anyone will grab at an unsharpened object poked at them. As I watched, by now fascinated at these goings on, the lads parted. The boy with the sword stood there looking at the blade in what I could clearly see was stupefaction, surprising though that seemed to me in the circumstances. The thief ran across to the Kataki guard.

  At that juncture the rotund purchaser of dubious azure silk woke
up to the fact that his sword no longer weighed down his belt. Immediately he set up a-braying.

  “My sword! Thief! Thief!”

  I shook my head. This was just life as it was lived in Oxonium in Tolindrin in the continent of Balintol on the planet Kregen four hundred light years from the world of my birth and no business of mine.

  The sword thief jabbered briefly and excitedly to the Kataki.

  He pointed.

  The lad holding the sword stood there for two heartbeats with that accusing finger pointing at him. Then he threw down the sword and started running as the Whiptail lumbered for him.

  The real sword snatcher stood still and even at this distance the look of satisfaction on his swarthy face repelled me. After the theft he could have dodged off with absolute security with no one the wiser until the shout of “Thief!” went up. Instead, he had deliberately framed the second youth and dropped him right in it up to the ears.

  As the boy raced swiftly in my direction finding clear spaces among the crowds with eel like grace, sometimes hidden from view by bartering figures, the look on his face was quite different from what one would expect. By Vox, yes! There was no fear there, no hunted look of terror. His expression was one of such fury as to scare off a leem. He raged with anger as he leaped along pursued by the Kataki guard.

  The cry of ‘Stop Thief!’ rang as loudly and as many times in the souks and markets of Oxonium as of any other bustling commercial city of Kregen. Chaffering people looked around smartly, hands flying to purses. Fists gripped sword and dagger hilts.

  The athleticism of the victim of this obscure plot to have him arrested proved instructive. He hurdled stalls, ducked under awnings, swerved like a veritable racing zorca around knots of folk all staring whichways. Those fables of Balintol recurred to me in the famous story which opens with just such a young lad flying through a crowded marketplace clutching a chicken by the legs, his warning colors flaming before his inward eye. I admired this young rapscallion's dash and still that dark expression of fury drew his face into a compressed knot.

  A man wearing a green shamlak whisked out his rapier. The fellow's spiky ears stuck up almost to the crown of his head. An Ift, he regarded himself as sharp and knowing enough to strike shrewd bargains in this bustling city market as of living comfortably in the forests of his home, that was perfectly clear. His rapier slashed.

  The tip sliced down the lad's thigh as he swerved a fraction too late.

  He did not cry out.

  “You blintz!” yelled the Ift. He waved the rapier with its point bloodied. But he did not run in pursuit.

  Dark redness stained down the boy's thigh. The scratch, light though it was, tumbled him off balance and he staggered helplessly into a wheeled stall. This immediately upended and sprayed everything with ripe vegetables. A little Och woman threw up her apron in dismay.

  When I next caught sight of the fugitive he had a patch of blood on his forehead and he limped. Yet, still he eluded them all.

  The Ift's act had been a trifle over the top, I fancied. Some of these highbrow forest folk can be a mite spiteful. The youngster's tribulations were not yet over. Trying to maintain his pace he skidded askew a wet patch and where normally he would have recovered with natural grace and gone haring on, now the two wounds troubled him enough to make him lose his balance. He skidded and toppled full length into a calsany mess strewing the ground. The effort he made to spring up instantly told on him. He disappeared from my view past a line of stalls. I let out a little sigh.

  This was no business of mine.

  No business whatsoever. The best thing to do was simply to step back around the corner and then walk off. The Rapa cutpurse had long since vanished and among the throngs there was now no chance of finding him.

  Tiri's purse must be consigned along with many another votive offering to the greater glory of Diproo the Nimble Fingered.

  So I stepped back around the corner into the slanting shadows where Zim and Genodras, all flushed crimson and deep emerald light upon the opposite buildings, pooled darkness in doorways and windows. The ferociously angry lad rounded the corner and hurled headlong down on me.

  Beyond the jut of the building and for the moment out of sight the hue and cry howled on making an unholy racket. The boy staggered. The rapier slash must be paining him now and his head must be ringing where he'd clouted his skull against the hard wood of the barrow. The muck coating his legs plastered the blood into a paste so that he did not leave a betraying trail of blood drops.

  Sink me! I said to myself in vast annoyance. By the Black Chunkrah! No business of mine or not, this despicable frame up and the ugly pursuit smelled to the highest heaven or the lowest hell of Kregen.

  Like a wrestler catching his opponent bouncing from the ropes, I stuck out my arm and clothes lined him in.

  He came reeling in like a shining sliptinger hooked from the torrent. I swiveled with his momentum like a weathervane and bundled him into the slot of darkness and turned about and pressed my back against him in the cleft of shadow.

  “Stand still, lad!” I snarled. “Make not a sound if you value your life.”

  They were lines from a famous play he'd probably never heard of let alone seen, and melodramatically colored though they were, they fitted this tempestuous situation. He made a single effort to wriggle out and run off and I shoved back hard and growled: “Stay still, you fambly. The damned Kataki's on his evil way.” His slight form lurched against me and then he stilled, panting softly.

  The shouting pack led by the Kataki guard stormed into view.

  Their blood was up. There was a thief to be caught. This was a hunt, they had the scent and they were out for the kill.

  Innocence before guilt had absolutely no part in their thought processes. The Kataki stared hotly down the street where people were turning to look enquiringly for the source of all this hubbub. To my great satisfaction the Whiptail saw no sight of his quarry. He hauled up opposite me and the crowd piled on abaft. He saw me, leaning negligently against the wall. His eyes squinted.

  “Where did he go?” he rapped out in that ugly Kataki way.

  “Who?” I said, quite pleasantly, considering the circumstances. “Oh, you mean the lad running.” I gave a casual gesture with a languid hand. “He dodged down the next alley I think.”

  “By Chezra-Gon-Kranak! I'll jikaider the blintz!” He gave me a hard stare. Then: “What d'ye mean, you think?”

  I returned that hard stare with interest. Some spark of that evil expression folk call the Dray Prescot Devil Look must have flashed into my face for his dark brows drew down and he sucked in a sudden quick breath between his snaggly teeth. I spoke levelly.

  “What I said.” My voice hardened. “Why?”

  He got the message all right. If he hadn't been in hot pursuit he'd have loved to have taken up the challenge. As it was he simply swung away and started running off towards the next alley with the mob following him all a-yelling and a-waving of fists and daggers. The rout caterwauled down the next alleyway.

  A voice in my ear said: “What in the sweet name of the Lady Balsitha is going on, Drajak?” The voice was light and mellifluous and tart, oh, yes, by Zair, very tart.

  “Your purse is stowed away in the bronze-bound chest of Diproo the Nimble Fingered, Tiri,” I said, without turning around. “I lost the Rapa. I found a lad who needs our assistance.” Then I turned to face her.

  At that moment an Aephar woman walked past with her daughter, both of them incredibly beautiful as Aephar women are. They saw the filthy and blood-smeared boy as he emerged from the shadows. The beauty of their faces changed only in a subtle fashion to express pity. Their smoothly undulating walk did not falter. The Aephar women went on around the corner into the bedlam of the market.

  Tiri and I exchanged glances. Beauty of outward form is not the only beauty possessed by Aephar ladies.

  With an eel like squirm and a sudden dart the lad tried to run off. That, by Krun, was a perfectly natural rea
ction. A fist in his collar hauled him up.

  “Whoa, lad. You're safe now. And the muck you have in that wound must be attended to.”

  “Lemme go!” He spat it out, wriggling and squirming. His injured leg jarred up as he tried to break free and scamper off. His face, already twisted in the anger suffusing him, contorted with the sudden stab of pain. This sobered him. Panting only a little he ripped out: “I know why you saved me. Slaver!”

  “Oh, no!” broke in Tiri. “You do us an injustice.”

  He sagged in my grip. “Not slavers? You really saved me? Then may Mother Saphira of the Gutters bless you with my thanks. But I must go back—”

  “You're going nowhere my feller me lad until that leg is seen to.”

  At least he had spoken his thanks with a courtesy not often found in the stews. He relaxed even more in my grasp so that I was forewarned. With an abrupt and defiant leap he tried suddenly to break away as my attention and hold on him, as he supposed, slackened.

  Even as I halted that last desperate surge, Tiri took his arm.

  “Best come along with us. We'll soon have that leg fixed.”

  Do not ask why I thus persisted in the attempt to aid this young lad. Perhaps it was the cut of his jib, perhaps the injustice he had suffered. Opaz knew, hadn't I been just such a youngster harshly treated by an insensitive world? Even though that world was four hundred light years away from Kregen. He wore sandal-like shoes, it is true, where I had gone barefooted. The lad himself settled the argument. Like a sack of flour dumped down into the bakery he slumped and would have fallen but for our supporting holds. After that it was a mere matter of swathing my shamlak as a cloak over him and assisting him along. We went the other way avoiding any further meetings with the unpleasant Whiptail and the mob.

  Having said that I realize the tautology. Who ever knew a pleasant Kataki? Well, perhaps I had, once, far away in the Eye of the World in Turismond.